


Melting Glass

by air_fried_air



Category: Original Work
Genre: Character Turned Into a Ghost, Gen, Ghosts, Gift for a friend, Mentions of suicide & self-harm, Original Character(s), Reincarnation, Trigger Warnings, hinted domestic violence, it has a lot of triggering topics in it, no beta we die like men, please please please be careful reading this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:55:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26493019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/air_fried_air/pseuds/air_fried_air
Summary: When a girl commits suicide by train, her best friend is torn apart. He can't live without her, and spends every day suffocating in his own grief.However, the girl comes back as a ghost, prepared to protect the only person in her living life that cared about her, seeing as how she can't move on to find her own peace.She can't talk to him. He can't see her. There's a barrier between this interaction of the dead and the living.The living and the dead do not interact. But this time, fate had decided, maybe they could be an exception.
Relationships: Original Female Character & Original Male Character
Kudos: 4





	Melting Glass

**Author's Note:**

> So...this fic (if you can call it that?) is a gift for friend who's been going through a shit ton of stuff right now. It basically depicts her own complicated relationships between herself and her best friend, who is 1) a guy and 2) more than just a friend. I'd call them queerplatonic?? I guess??
> 
> There aren't any names mentioned in here either. This is based off real people and it feels disrespectful to release their names into the void, which is the Internet.
> 
> And please, please, PLEASE understand that there are a lot of triggering topics going around this fic. Like I said, friend going through hard times here. So be careful.
> 
> This has been read and given permission to post by said friend.
> 
> Off we go-

It had been a week.

A week of not seeing her, waking up every morning and forgetting that she was no longer here, a week of nightmares that featured a train and screaming, a week of waking up in the middle of the night and breathing shuddering breaths. He had heard about phantom pains with victims that had lost their limbs. It was just like that, except it was as if _half_ of him was missing, like a piece of his soul was torn away from him. Every single day, without fail, he remembered that she was gone forever. He would never hear her voice or see the grudging little smile she would always give when she saw him. And it hurt. _Every single goddamn time._ He could no longer concentrate. He no longer felt attached the warmth of the living world.

And how could he? He had been one of the only people that knew her, what she was really like, what was bottled up inside of her, and now fate had snatched her away like a dying flame in the wind. He considered giving in and joining her side. God, he wanted to do that, but he knew, somehow, that if he did that he would never be able to find her on the other side.

He could no longer focus on the things happening in the warm, colourful world around him. Everything was grey and pale, the smiles and laughter of others like a cruel joke on him and an insult to her. He still couldn’t quite wrap his mind around the fact that life still pounded through the people around him, that everyone else could just go on living their lives without her. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair at all. She should be standing next to him, the inside of her forearms healing, her eyes bright with the spark of being alive. The spark in every living person. Now that she was gone he couldn’t bear to think about that spark gone, her eyes staring into a sky they could not see.

He was broken on the inside. He couldn’t live life properly without her being with him.

Right next to him, a pale form of her sat. He couldn’t see her. She couldn’t find peace in the life after this one, and so her restless energy had come back to him. She sighed, leaning against his shoulder. He was right there. She was next to him. It was like they were separated by a thick wall of glass.

The living and the dead do not interact. But this time, fate had decided, maybe they could be an exception.

* * *

A month.

A month of adjusting to not seeing her, waking up only to realise that she was fully, _really_ gone, a month of listening to her voicemail and sitting on the floor scrolling through all the messages they had shared. He wasn’t sure if they helped. It hurt hearing her recorded voice, a dead girl’s last reminder echoing through his walls. Everything slowly turned into a saturated, dead colour. What was the point of seeing the sun rise and the moon fall in their own beauty without her beside him?

He had to order himself to do things now, shaking himself awake to do the smallest things. His grades suffered from it. His parents still screamed and argued downstairs. Sometimes, on really bad days, he would find himself shaking, pressing the bruises on his arms to shock himself back into reality, the reality that his dad would never actually disappear the way he had always wanted when he was younger. An object thrown. A thrashing of words. The slumped silence of defeat. The cycle would repeat.

Sometimes he wished for death, he admitted it. He wished he were gone, so that pain and guilt and worry would become intangible, slipping away from him like sand. But that would mean disappointing _her,_ and possibly never finding her on the other side.

So he lived. For the dead girl’s memory.

He tried to remember all the things she had enjoyed. She had been quiet, but he had learnt to see the tell-tale signs that betrayed her demeanour. A romance anime. A hoodie the colour of the palest pink, like the last petal of a sunburnt rose. The occasional smile, an upturn of lips, a bowing of her head. Now he would replay all these, to keep her memory alive through him. No one had been truly affected by her death, not in the slightest. It was only him left for the last embers of that flickered weakly through them. He _would_ maintain those few sparks, those burning coals. The flame might have died down but the ashes were still hot.

When he sat on the floor to watch one of her favourites this time though, he swore he was being watched.

The girl had an…interesting month figuring things out.

She was dead, 100 percent. No one could see her. No one could hear her. She floated instead of being firmly attached to the ground; the pull of gravity was only for the living. Cats hissed and dogs barked, but she ignored them. At first she attempted trying to make friends with them, to have some sort of interaction with a living thing. After the tenth try though, with the cat snarling and leaping right through her, she gave up. The other dead were useless. Most of them came back as angry spirits, writhing in pain and anger as they sought out revenge. Those ones looked different. As far as she knew, she was the only one that had come back into this mortal world to take care of someone.

Taking care of the boy was hard. She couldn’t write him anything; it would disappear as soon as her hand left a foggy mirror. She could only hold things if she concentrated. She couldn’t do anything when he was stifling sobs in his room, pleading with the air about two things: his dad and _her._ When he picked up the razor in the bathroom, she had screeched up a racket and spun around him. A bird flew off outside. He shook his head and put the blade down. The girl had learned that she could cause interference with the living if she tried hard enough.

He never touched that blade again.

Tonight he sat down on the floor, wrapping a blanket around his alarmingly thin frame. He wasn’t eating properly. That was another issue she hadn't thought of. He opened his laptop, and together they sat silently as it whirred to life. He placed it on a little desk, and she sat right behind it, wondering what he was doing.

He ate a bowl of ramen, thank the gods. She watched him as he prepared whatever he was doing, sitting down to eat. He took a shuddering breath, sighing as he pressed the space bar.

The intro of her favourite anime hit her like a bullet.

Oh…that was what he was doing.

“Since…since when did you watch reverse harems?” Her voice cracked. It was the first time she’d used it for a long time. She wasn’t even sure why she said it out loud. He wouldn’t even be able to hear her.

So that was why she was very surprised when the boy set down his bowl. He looked around the room, eyes seeing nothing.

“Hello?” 

* * *

He thought he saw her at the train station.

He was standing on the train, squeezed between people like sardines in a can. Ever since her death he’d developed an overwhelming fear of trains and small spaces, so right now, pressed between so many different bodies, he was panicking on the inside, waves of anxiety threading around him. He held tightly onto his backpack which he had secured on the ground with his legs, breathing in and out slowly.

When the doors of the train finally, _finally_ opened, it was like a dam had broken. People spilled out like fish from a broken net, swirling with the indiscernible scent of life. They all crowded towards the escalator. Noise surrounded him, footsteps, chattering, the low huff of the train, the monotone voice of the platform signs. The anxiety leapt and dipped like a seagull on the wind. In flashes he heard his heart beat as if he were far away from his own body, like he was being detached from the world, his spirit floating, disappearing-

_What was that._

His heart changed from slowly beating to pounding in a matter of seconds.

_What was that._

A glint of brown hair turned gold in the sun.

_Who was that._

A gold that looked just like her.

_Who was that._

There was no way she could be back.

_You can’t be her. You can’t be her. You can’t be-_

He stood rooted to the spot, the people around him giving him irritated huffs or ignoring him, weaving around him, just another obstacle to their destination. _She_ was right there, laughing at something on her phone, _the exact same model as she used to have,_ listening to music, earbuds hidden with that hair that caught sunlight so easily.

There was no way. But she was there, living and breathing and beating all the vibrant colours of a living person-

His feet moved before he could think. He dared to hope. Colours leapt at him suddenly. It was as if he was seeing through a different colour spectrum. He chased after her.

“Wait! Miss-”

She spun around.

It was not her.

Some logical part of his brain chided him for thinking it was her, but that didn’t stop the sudden rush of disappointment and newly dredged up pain in his heart. The girl looked surprised. Why wouldn’t she be? She took out one of her earphones. “Yes-?”

“Sorry, I mistook you-” _for a dead girl. For someone I used to know. For someone that could be standing here alive. For someone that could have walked away from the edge of that platform._ The words choked in his throat. “I-I thought you were someone else. Sorry.”

The trickle of people slowed, now reduced to some few stragglers. The girl shrugged, putting the earphone back in. “No problem.” She walked to the escalator and left him.

Oh gods that hurt. He knew he shouldn’t have hoped. There was no logical, physical way. But just for those few seconds, he had really believed that she was back. The universe really had toyed with him, throwing coincidences at him like a game of marbles. Tears welled in the corners of his eyes, and he shook his head, looking up at the roof that sheltered the platform. _I’m okay.. That girl wasn’t her. I'm okay. I'm okay._

He was not okay.

He blinked most of his tears away and trudged to the escalator. The voices in his head grew louder. The demons in his heart hungered for more. He tried to drown them out, but they knew how to swim. Numbly, the escalator carried him up to the surface. He let his eyes turn glassy and slide over details.

Something prickled the back of his neck.

He whirled around. No one was left on the platform. Sunlight left bright patches on the ground. A calm wind blew. For a moment, he could imagine her standing there.

It could be his imagination, but he really thought he saw her there, saying _goodbye_ in a girl’s voice that no one living remembered anymore, that no one living would ever hear again.

He let a small, sad smile grace his face and climbed the rest of the way up, oblivious to the ghost that stood on the platform.

She learned that day that in sunlight her concentration strengthened, and maybe the boy could see her for a few flickering seconds, the thick glass wall between them thinning like melting ice.

And the three words she had spoken for the day:

“ _What the fuck.”_

* * *

He lost track of time by this point.

He was adjusting, but at the same time he wasn’t. There were days where he could think about her and not break down, days where he could put a band aid onto the cracked shards of his heart, days where he could hold down the grief and enjoy small things that she had enjoyed. He coped by living for her. He coped by doing small things that she liked.

But then there were days with nightmares, days where it was as if he were drowning in ghosts, drowning in pain and an inky darkness that no light could penetrate, days of sitting on the ground listlessly and bringing back every memory like a flood, trying to remember. He was already forgetting small details about her, and it terrified him. He was terrified that one day he would wake up and not remember her at all, just another soul in the world.

Weeks flew by, like life had forgotten about her. _Here,_ it said, _Have this. We don’t want her anymore._ He accepted. Days went by with a smile on his face that didn’t reach his dull eyes. Friends came up to him asking if he was okay. _I’m fine,_ he’d tell them. _I’m okay. Just tired._ They’d give him a pat on the shoulder and soften their words around him. They told him to tell them if he wasn’t okay. _I’m okay. I’m okay. Nothing’s wrong._

_Just tired._

_Sleep earlier,_ people would say.

But how does one sleep if the demons in their mind continue to attack?

Last night he had a nightmare. A really bad one. Whenever he closed his eyes, he saw shots of the dream. It glitched and reformed every single time, so he no longer knew what had been real and what he was making up.

The dream featured a train. It always did. He saw her standing on the edge. Invisible hands clutched at him, holding him down. He opened his mouth to yell at her to stop, that he was right there, that he was-

The train shot by with burning lights and a scream.

_What did I do wrong?_

_Why did you jump?_

_Are you ever coming back?_

He woke up with a start after that one, spluttering and breathing hard, like he had just gone for a run. Everything was clinging onto him, he couldn’t reach her, he couldn’t-

The bed sheets were kicked off. The room was silent save for his shuddering breaths.

“ _What did I do wrong to you?”_ No one was there, obviously. But after the incident at the train station, he wasn’t so sure. “ _Are you here? Have you moved on?” Will you come back to me?_

His light bulb shattered. His curtains rustled. Every instinct in his body told him to run, to get out of this place. But he didn’t. The tinkling of slender glass stopped. Thin streams of smoke drifted from the shattered socket.

“ _Onii-chan. I never left you in the first place.”_ He didn’t think he imagined the voice. He cried.

And then slept.

When he woke up, he swore it was just a figure of his imagination. But when he saw the glass on the ground, he knew it was real. She was-

His neutral mood shattered. Panic swamped him. There was no way, no way he could ever-

He’d forgotten her smile.

Fate laughed. The whispers of the dead always require a price.

This was going to be very, very interesting.

* * *

Eight months flew by, fast as a train.

It was her death, after all, so she should be allowed to make dark jokes about it, right?

It had been about a year and a bit now, with crisp winter air that she couldn’t breathe in. No more interactions had happened since the lightbulb incident. The dream incident. She had wandered around a bit more, discovering other ghosts and picking up bits of information. Some world leader had died. A plague erupted in a tropical country. Small bits of news like that. She thought it would make her feel better, but instead it felt like nostalgia, watching the living go by with their lives as if she weren't ever breathing like them. Like listening to a song she had never heard but knowing all the lyrics.

On New Year’s Day she found it the boy was scared of fireworks. She found him on the ground, flinching at every loud noise it inflicted. She guessed what he was thinking. A new year, a fresh start. Without her. It terrified him.

As she observed him throughout the process of another month, she noticed the boy looking conflicted all the time, often daydreaming, not realising he was staring straight into her face, as if he had forgotten something. His parents were silent now, but she couldn’t tell if it was better to have them neglect the boy or for them to rebuke him. She wanted him to move on. She wasn’t anything big or spectacular in this world. She wanted move on and for him to find his peace.

But his presence from both when she was living and dead clung to her. She couldn’t shake it off. So she substituted by watching over the only person that had ever cared.

She watched him go about his day. She hovered over him at school. When the bell rung, she didn’t wait for him. She knew the route to his house well enough. She sped ahead of him and waited for him to arrive. It was like waiting for him to come home, when she was still alive, and he’d always come back. It was a routine she had fallen into when she was alive, now repeated when she was dead. It was comforting, having a piece of her living life like that.

Only he didn’t come back at his usual time today.

His presence wasn’t anyway near the house. She ran out, ducking through nearby streets, panic flooding her. What if- what if he had-

_Don’t do what I did._

_Please._

_You deserve more than me._

Suddenly she could feel him, like a wall of warmth had hit her. She sighed in relief. _Relief_ was probably an understatement. The panic swept away. The sun seemed to shine brighter. Thank God.

He walked out of the local convenience store, carrying a small bag. She hovered closer around him, taking deep breaths. He was here. He was still alive. It was fine.

When they reached his house, the boy finally shook out whatever he had bought onto his desk. She peeked curiously over his shoulder. There was a mirror and a bag of flour.

Was he trying to…talk to her?

He lightly dusted the mirror with flour, resting it on his desk before sitting on the bed. She felt obliged to sit down next to the mirror on the desk. So she did.

“I know you’re here.”

She sucked in a sharp breath. The boy continued quietly.

“I know you’re here as like, a ghost. Watching me, maybe. Is that why you’re here? Are you following me every day?”

She leaned forward to hear him sigh. “Maybe I’m just being crazy, and I'm talking to no one.” He nodded at the mirror. “But please…if you're here…just…”

She followed his request. Slowly, carefully, she wrote on the mirror.

_Hello, older brother._

He started. He looked like he was about to cry. “Oh god, is that really you?”

_Yeah._

“C-Can you…talk?”

_I don’t know. I'm still figuring things out._

“I'm still figuring out life without you.”

She didn’t write for a bit. Then she started again.

_Are you okay?_

The boy let out a wobbly laugh. “You’re the one who’s d-dead and a ghost but you're asking if I'm okay?”

_Ghosts don’t feel physical pain. You haven't slept in days. You good?_

He laid down on the bed. “I don’t know. Some days I'm fine. Other days I want to join you.”

She sent several papers flying at that. _Don’t. You deserve to live._

_Live…_

_For me._

He didn’t reply immediately. She didn’t offer anything else. They sat together in silence for a moment, until he started talking again.

“We should’ve taken more pictures. When you were, living, I mean. I can't remember the way you laughed. I can't…I can't see your smile anymore.” He raised a hand. “Where are you right now, anyways?”

She floated up and landed next to him. _Right beside you as always, older brother._

He wiped his face with a sleeve. “Thanks for responding. I thought-I thought I was just…imagining at the train station. I-I…”

_It’s okay. I was figuring things out that time. It was weird._

He sniffed. “Your handwriting is slanted as always.”

She glanced at the mirror. _Yeah. Guess writing doesn’t change in death._ Her eyes met the clock and she swore. _Don’t you go tutoring in like five minutes?_

“Fuck.” The boy rolled onto his back, flipping himself up. He shoved a few items into his bag. “I'll be going. Let’s talk another time, yeah?”

She traced one last message onto the mirror. _Yes, lets._

“And…stay with me,” he added quietly, and he rushed out the door, with the invisible ghost girl suspended by his side.

* * *

The weeks progressed, and the beginning of spring began showing signs. Plants grew timidly up into the weak sunlight, steadily growing stronger. Insects came back. Birds started to fly about more, returning from far off migrations.

After the mirror meeting they had three more. Then they both noticed the change.

He couldn’t remember things about her anymore. He couldn’t remember where she used to live. What her favourite food was. What her favourite anime was. No matter how hard he thought, he couldn’t recall them to mind. He couldn’t focus on her as strong as he used to. He was forgetting. This was the price: the more he talked with the dead, the more the memories vanished.

So he fell back underneath the swaying tide that dragged him down. It was like he had lost her, the second time. And he had failed to save her, again.

He sat alone at school, distancing himself from the other kids. It was the final year of middle school now, and the thought of moving onto high school made him feel like he was drowning. It would be starting a new school, once again, without the girl.

Most of his time was now spent on trying to pull out the forgotten memories from some deep archive in his brain. His grades dipped. The girl was more important. He was going to hold onto her memory, protect the glowing coals of her existence until his blew out too. He was going to protect them, till the day he finally joined her side.

Knowing that she was still around him hurt. She was there but he couldn’t interact with her. The melting glass wall between them was now solidified back into thick glass.

Thick, but easily breakable.

He could talk to her at any moment. He really could. Out of habit now, he carried around a mirror and a handful of flour around. But he knew that the moment he talked to her, the memories would slip away from his mind like the sand in an hourglass and he’d forget that she was ever a part of his life.

He walked home, glancing at the store where he had first bought the mirror. He didn’t regret his decision to buy it. It had a been the spur of the moment, a question he had been playing with since the light bulb incident.

He hadn't had any nightmares after meeting her again, too.

Now his dreams were disturbingly calm. Sometimes he didn’t dream at all. It panicked him, a little bit. As if her essence was draining away like sand in an hourglass.

His thoughts carried him home, heavy in his heart. He yearned to hear her voice. On the second last meeting she had spoken, flickering into his sight with a shy smile.

 _Hello,_ she had said, smiling wide, looking happier than he had ever seen.

Wait, scratch that. He _had_ seen her happy like that. Only when she used to be around him.

When he walked up into his room and opened his door he was hit with the usual scent of strawberry mints, her favourite kind. They had talked about food once, and the girl had talked about how she missed being able to eat, so that smelling food was a bit like being full again. Human again. So he made sure every once in a while he bought a packet of mints (from the same store he had bought the mirror, no less) and set it on his desk. A couple of days later, the mints would be gone, or random objects would be moved from their place and he knew it was her. _It makes me more human. More rooted here in this mortal world,_ she said after thanking him for the mints. _Like I remember their scent and I can forget that I'm actually beyond saving._

He gracelessly dumped his school bag on the floor, shifting into a comfortable position on his chair. He stared at his desk, the notes and pens and different bits of stationery, letting his eyes become unfocused. A couple of different sized screwdrivers and a pamphlet reminded him that he had to help a friend build her pc at some point. She was easily the only healthy interaction he was having by this point, mainly because she _wanted_ to talk to him, not the other way around. She didn’t expect him to heal straight away. She didn’t look at him with pity or worry every single time. It calmed him down, distracted his brain from the girl for a good couple of hours. It was a bit like life returning to normal again.

(But how could life be normal without her?)

He sighed and fiddled with the bits of metal and screws, preparing pieces for the friend. His room was quiet, a dull beginning chorus of cicadas humming in the distance. Sunlight streamed in from his dusty curtains.

There was a crackle as the girl materialised. He started in surprise, his even mood turning into panic, uneasiness, anxiousness, the drowning sense of loss. This would be the last time he would see her.

_Why?_

The girl looked at him. He stared back at her with new eyes. It was like looking at her for the first time, perfected in the streams of sunlight.

“Onii-chan.” She smiled sadly, reaching out her hand to tug on his sleeve. It didn’t pass through him like it usually did.

She was using up everything she had to manifest like this. It really meant that this was his last time seeing her.

“You have to move on. I can't, I can't see you like this every day. Please. It’s okay if you forget everything.”

_The memories are draining fast. He can feel it. He stood up, a tear sliding down his face._ “I don’t want to leave you behind.”

“It’s fine. You can go. I’ll always be beside you, whether you remember or not.”

_He can't remember her name. He's on the ground now, shaking, crying. Please stop. Stop. I need, I need to-_

“Please, don’t do this, I don’t want to forget, I don’t want-”

“It’s okay, onii-chan. You have to move on. Please. Do it for me.”

_He can't remember what happened to her. He knows she was important…but why? All he can see in his mind’s eye now is the way a girl’s hair used to glint gold in the sun, the way her eyes used to shine in the pure rays of the sunlight._

“I…Who are you?”

_They’re touching foreheads now, both crying. He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t know who this girl is._

“A distant memory. Move on. I’ll always be there-I swear-”

_He could no longer see her. The dead and the living had strayed too close to each other. He stood up. He felt something a little like freedom for the first time since…what had happened?_ “I…I love you.” _I **loved** you. I always have. I always will. ~~I’ll never forget you.~~_

_Wait…who am I talking about?_

The boy turned to his desk and continued his work like nothing had happened, the cicadas droning on.

So he never heard her whisper, “I love you too,” as she vanished from the land of the living, having found her peace at last.

* * *

Three years passed.

The boy lived. He aged, he made new friends, went to different schools. He smiled now. He laughed. He talked. He socialised. He repaired bonds with the people around him.

Some days he felt lost. Like he was missing something important. Then he would dismiss the feeling and go on.

It was an average day when he met the little girl. An average day of finishing school, going to his part-time job, closing up there. He was walking home, taking a detour through a park, listening to music in one ear.

Then he heard the voice of a little girl laughing.

It was bright. It was clear. He stopped, confused. Had he heard that laugh before? He didn’t know any young girls, but that voice…

He turned around, and saw the source of the laughter some hundred metres away from him, playing with her friends. Her hair was brown. It caught the sun easily, glinting gold.

Did he remember this? What was this? His head hurt. He was confused. He was sad, but he didn’t know why. Aching guilt, loss, anxiety. It swirled around him.

Suddenly he needed to know. He jogged over to the young girl. She was easily about four or five, looking healthy and clean. She had her back turned on him.

“Uh, excuse me-?”

She turned around and the first thing he saw was her wide smile, bright and shining, full of the joy of a thousand suns. He was hit with nostalgia, and a flood of painful, angry memories. A train. A death. A dusting of flour on a mirror. He wanted to cry in disbelief. There was no way, it was impossible, there was-

She broke into an even widen smile when she saw him. She ran towards him, hugging him fiercely. He pulled back in shock, tears now rolling down his face. But he was amazed, shocked. Beyond anything mere words could describe.

The little girl hugged him tight, then looked up, her smile wide and joyful.

“Hello, onii-chan!”

**Author's Note:**

> Small note: Onii-chan is "older brother" in Japanese, if you didn't know.  
> If you cried, congratulations, you're just like my friend :3
> 
> There's so much things in this world that are worth living for. So many small things everyday that make life worthy of you. Please. Don't die.


End file.
